The athlete's heart syndrome

The athlete's heart is a benign condition, associated with physiologic alterations that can be detected on physical and laboratory examination. Echocardiography is a particularly useful technique is quantitating cardiac adaptation to exercise training and in screening for cardiovascular disorders that can be deleterious to the athlete. Cardiomyopathies are common causes of sudden death in young athletes, and myocarditis in physically-active young military recruits. Coronary disease is usually implicated in middle-aged athletes such as distance runners. Recent well-publicized deaths in several athletes have focused more attention on the need to detect Marfan's syndrome and cocaine use. Published guidelines such as the 16th Bethesda Conference and recent medical advances like new antihypertensive and antiarrhythmic drugs assist the clinician in counseling and managing athletes with cardiovascular disorders.     

The heart of the old hemiplegic patient (author's transl)]

The heart of the old hemiplegic patient is examined as follows: 1. The preapoplectic situation of the heart which often induces in a conclusive manner the beginning of a stroke, 2. the occurrence of heart troubles with the stroke itself and 3. the influence of rehabilitation measures and the heart function. Preexistent heart troubles are very frequent (in ca. 80%). Thereby the hypertension with a left ventricular hypertrophy and later with heart failure play an important role. The stroke itself especially in subarachnoidal bleedings can cause severe electrocardiographic anomalies. The telemetric controlled heart shows specially while rehabilitation more extrasystoles and alterations of repolarisation but usually do not impair the rehabilitation. With a systematic rehabilitation (training) the heart is most favourably influenced.     

Echocardiographic representation of the fetal heart (time-motion registration) (author's transl)]

With time-motion registration of the fetal heart it is possible to get information about the size of the ventricles, the left atrium and the aorta. First results of this method of investigation are demonstrated.